Use VVPAT, CCTVs for free and fair poll: Gujarat Cong to EC

The Gujarat Congress today urged the Election Commission (EC) to use electronic voting machines (EVMs), connected with VVPAT machines, to ensure a free and fair Assembly election in the state, due later this year.
A delegation, led by Congress general secretary Dipak Babaria, today handed over a memorandum in this regard to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Gujarat, B B Swain, at Gandhinagar, said a party release.
The opposition party urged the CEO to ensure that voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines were connected to the EVMs for greater transparency in the election.
The party also urged Swain to install CCTV cameras at all the polling booths, as well as near the VVPAT machines, to check any wrongdoing.

The delegation wanted the poll panel to stop the polling immediately whenever they found a mismatch of votes in the EVM and the VVPAT machine.
The party was also not in favour of the state government engaging any private agency in the election process, the release said.

Alleging that the ruling BJP had deployed "tainted" officials in the past to carry out poll-related tasks in order to get a "desired outcome", the Congress leaders urged the EC to ensure that the election was held only under the supervision of "unbiased" officials, the release added.
Citing cases during the local bodies election in Gujarat, the delegation also urged the EC to ensure that names of voters did not get deleted from the final electoral rolls.

Last month, the EC had informed the Supreme Court that it would be able to conduct the Gujarat Assembly polls using EVMs with paper trail if it got 73,500 VVPAT machines from the manufacturers by September.